Product display at exhibits or shows and the like is a major problem to manufacturers and/or distributors of goods, who must travel to various exhibition centers and set up for showings on short notice and for limited lengths of time. In practice, booth space is rented for this purpose and the representatives or sales persons are required to travel on tight schedules coordinated with the provision of furnishings that are usually rented and set up immediately preceding the show, all of which is to accommodate the paraphernalia and product to be presented to prospective buyers and/or customers. Heretofore, the logistics have been complicated by the rental of sight unseen furnishings which may or may not be best suited for a particular product, and the timeliness of the installation may be in doubt. Therefore, it is a general object of this invention to provide for portability of a display wall, whereby a sales person can travel with a knock-down display unit customized to his product. Accordingly, it is an object to package this display unit within a traveling case of moderate size, packing a multiplicity of modules of light weight and consequently establishing a shipping case of moderate weight that is easily handled by a person.
Product display involves graphics as well as the presentation of the actual product in article form and/or parts thereof. Art work and related article presentation is therefore of primary concern, and all of which is to be accommodated by the modular panels. Accordingly, it is an object to provide panels with a deep offset for the embracement of the graphics when employed and for the accommodation of the physical products and related articles and parts thereof when they are to be shown. In carrying out this invention, the modular panels are of shadow-box form, each with a planar bottom deeply inset from a marginal frame; the graphics and/or articles for display being on or carried by said bottom, preferably by means of a graphic panel or mounting panel as will be described.
Light weight panels tend to be flimsy and it is therefore an object of this invention to reinforce the same by means of the perimeter frame thereof which is of continuous channel configuration for the presentation of straight beam sections. It is also an object to compliment the channel section beams at the corners of the frame formed thereby, gussets being fixed thereto at each corner of the modular panel to stiffen the same and to receive the coupling members which cooperatively relate the panels into coplanar wall formation.
The modular panels are alike or identical, and when they are in assembled relation the gussets of juxtaposed panel corners nest together in coplanar relation. It is an object to couple these nested corners, either two or four as required, and to this end coupling plates are provided with fasteners secured to the nested corner gussets. Accordingly there is a single fastener at each modular panel corner to be attached.
The standards or leg members for the assembly of the aforesaid modular panels are tubular members for lightness, and the coupling plates of the center panel and surrounding juxtaposed panels nested thereto are carried by the leg members to be coupled to said nested corners. In this way, the upstanding leg members each supported by a foot, stiffen the frames of the multiplicity of modular panels to hold them coplanar as shown.
Portability is of prime concern, and to this end the modular panels are nestable, so that one panel drops into the next with the marginal frames thereof contiguous one over the other. Therefore, the depth of the case to enclose a multiplicity thereof is of a dimension commensurate with the added thickness of the frame channels plus the depth of one offset bottom; and accordingly it is a simple matter to pack a multiplicity, for example six, of said panels into one case of minimal dimension. Further, the said one offset bottom establishes a chamber for the accommodation of articles such as for example the physical articles to be displayed.